terranationsfandomcom-20200214-history
Cåoism
Cåoism '''is a religion and philosophy originating from Toran that follows the teachings of the ancient Toranese prophet Vadha, centered around the idea that the material world (Ran) and immaterial world (Nå) are unified by a river of life known as the Cåo, and that this life force unites humanity with the natural world. There are many different sects and variants of Cåoism with disagree over Vadha's humanity, the importance of ancillary texts, the incorporation of other religious traditions into the canon, and the goal of human endeavor; while the largest split is between Classical and Reform Cåoism, other religious traditions such as Astyi and New Cåoism have split off and become their own religions. The principle belief of Cåoism is that all life is connected through a river of life, the Cåo, and that life is drawn from this river at birth and returned to it at death. Cåoism rejects a theistic view of the world, arguing that the world was not intelligently designed and that there is no intelligent being guiding the lives of humans. The two main sects of Cåoism are Classical Cåoism and Reform Cåoism, though there are other, non-Vadhist demoninantions that believe that Vadha was not a prophet and was merely an intelligent man, which refuse to consider any of the Books of Cåo as absolute scripture. Classical Cåoism holds that the world is eternal and that the Cåo is a physical, invisible force; it also holds that the text of all nine books of Cåo are scripture and absolute truth, including those written by later philosophers such as Issech and Surat. Reform Cåoism follows the teachings of the thirteenth century naturalist and philosopher Tedoya Zaoli and rejects all of the books aside from the first, and believes that the stories surrounding Vadha are apocryphal and meant to be seen as parables, not exact truth. It also holds that the Cåo is not actually a physical river but instead merely a concept and a force outside of the realm of matter, and that the universe was created in the event known as the Big Bang, before which there was a different, identical universe. Cåoism originated in the town of Aalam around 97 BCE, with the prophet known as Vadha. It soon spread throughout the Déjè River valley as a minority religion. During this time, a number of other philosophers such as Issech and Surat wrote extensively on Cåoism, interpreting it through the lense of the time. In 118 CE, the city of Chancille was founded by Abimet as a haven for Cåoists, and soon Chancille's influence spread throughout the world. Within five hundred years, nearly all of the Déjè valley was Cåoists. Soon, the Toranese Empire, centered in Chancille, and the Kingdom of Ptolomaise spread the religion throughout Toran and the Toranese world. In the early thirteenth century, a Toranese naturalist, philosopher, and monk named Tedoya Zaoli began questioning the established religion and reinterpreted the original text of Vadha within the context of his observations about the natural world. The followers of Zaoli's doctrine came to be known as Reform Cåoists, and soon war broke out between Reform Cåoists and the established Classical Cåoists. Eventually the Reform Cåoists ended up in control; however, tension has remained between the sects of Cåoism for centuries since. Today, the majority of Cåoists are Reform (56%), followed by Classical (41%) and other denominations (5%). Cåoism is the majority religion in Toran, Lemmenske, Phaetonica, Tempenloc, Azenloc, Ukariloc, Geskia, Poran, North and South Tyrennea, Nilana and Kanzefu, a major religion in Zenia, Tabora, Ziunia, Tara, Kavi, Munera, Capulus, Barreland, Ulamtyr, Gemoriyn, the Republic of Ukar and Sednyana (predominantly as Astyi), and a small but present minority in most of the rest of the countries of the world. History '''Origins The origins of Cåoism and the life of Vadha are recounted in the Book of Travels ''(''Laomindrasa), supposedly compiled by Vadha's disciples Sutra and Vajya. While the historical validity of these accounts has often been questioned, they are widely taught and accepted. In the Laomindrasa, Sutra and Vajya traveled extensively to find people throughout the world who had met and had experiences with Vadha, and to piece together their enigmatic teacher's life story. In these stories, Vadha claims to be from A'alam, a region believed to be in southern Assaret near Ågalasia, and at different points claims to be an orphan, raised by an abusive drinker, raised by himself in the woods, and never born at all. He travels throughout the kingdom preaching of the Cåo and how society has lost its way until he is arrested by the king of Mashkriat (modern-day Nihabat) and survives three death sentences: first by being thrown into a pit with lions and not being eaten; second by being tied at the waist and thrown into the river, but not drowning; and third, by being set on fire, and having his clothes burn off but surviving unscathed. Declaring this a curse, the king of Mashkriat sets him free, and he flees with a core group of followers to the mountains, where he searches for the source (Panga) until he settles in the Lhote valley and founds a community on the slopes of the world's highest mountains, in a location known as Apangasrivaya. According to tradition, he established the community there, and then The nature of Vadha's first community - which would come to be known in retrospect as the Midhara - ''has been the matter of much contention and debate among Cåoists. It is mentioned only vaguely in the ''Laomindrasa, which was allegedly compiled some twenty-seven years later, at the disbanding of the Midhara. According to traditions, the disciples of Vadha who remained at Apangasrivaya followed his teachings and came as close to anyone in history to the impossible complete convergence, Modhbalyata. However, after twenty-seven years, they convened and made the Great Decision (Harakhaudāna) ''to abandon their nearly perfected lives in order to aid the world in achieving better unity and strengthen the universal Cåo. '''Cåoism before the empire' Teachings and Cosmology In broad strokes, Cåoism defines human as only a tiny part of a vast and fundamentally unknowable universe that extends far beyond the realm of the physical (the Ran) ''and into the realm of the ''Nå. ''The ''Ran ''and ''Nå are bridged by the Cåo, the Flow, which inhabits all living beings and allows physical beings to transcend their materiality. Human desire, passion, emotion, poetry, music, and art are often seen as manifestations of Nå, ''which represents itself in humans through their conscious thinking mind, which is seen as immaterial, and through each person's individual ''din ''(drop) of Cåo. Cåoists therefore do not believe in souls, but instead understand a unity to all being that is in itself eternal, and that upon death the manifestations of individuality are erased from one's hold on the Cåo and all is returned to the constant Flow. The Cåo is sizeless and immaterial, and is considered to "flow" unidirectionally downward (''darathām) through Nå ''and ''Ran. Gravity is sometimes seen as a manifestation of the ultimate downward flow; modernist Cåoists sometimes express physical darathām ''in terms of entropy. ''Darathām ''in the ''Nå ''is an enormously complicated concept that has been debated by many Cåoist scholars and lies at the center of many Cåoist teachings; in a sense, it is a cosmic correctness and easiness that goes without effort, toward which all things eventually tend. ''Darathām ''is seen as entirely relative and is without destination; the universe has no beginning and no end, and all objective truth and observation is only relative to the states that we have already seen. ''Assarām ''is the opposite, upward flow, which characterizes much human work and intention; the construction of empires, of cities, the trapping of emotions in words as poetry or in images as paintings, is seen as going against the eventual flow of the universe and nonetheless as an essential component of human existence. Vadha wrote: ''The meaning of life is in carrying droplets up mountains while knowing that eventually all water flows to the sea. It is in climbing mountains that Man becomes Man before turning back to perfect oneness. ''Cāoists also see a perfect cosmic disorder that they often express through contrasts and contradictions, and eschew the ability of words or any other constructions of ''Ran to express perfect meaning. They also typically disregard any attempt to understand everything or perfect everything, claiming that humans are eternally imperfect and that perfection is impossible. It is unclear to Cåoists whether or not the Ran is the only world connected to the Nå, and a popular interpretation is that there are infinitely many worlds like the Ran ''with fundamentally different paradigms of existence. The strength of the Cåo determines how tightly tied the Ran is to the Nå; as the Cåo makes up all humans, peace, harmony and stability strengthen the Cåo while war, cruelty and death weaken it. Fundamentally, without Cåo, the Nå and Ran could be separated, and humans would be no longer conscious beings but rather automatons. According to Vadha, complete convergence (''modhbalyata) of the Nå and Ran is approachable but impossible due to the fundamental flaws of human beings, and that modhbalyata ''has never and will never be true; upon ''modhbalyata, time and space themselves would be transcended. At this point, the Cåo would be everything and all humans would be united into a single formless spirit. According to Surat, this spirit is called Tocåo ''and Dharabata is the shadow of Tocåo on the "past out of time" (''yasaljafurin). Time The Cåoist theory of time, developed by many different scholars over hundreds of years, has been considered baffling by members of nearly all other traditions other than modern physicists, who often believe that the Cåoist conception of time is far more accurate than that of other ancient philosophies. Cåoist scholars came to see time as inextricably bound up in materiality, and therefore time was an element of the Ran. The passing of time, therefore, was not constant, and time itself would end upon complete convergence. When Cåoists write on ancient times, they cannot speak in terms of years, as years were perceived as having been different in ancient times; during the high period of convergence in antiquity, time was thought to have become far more fluid and wavering with the demands of the conscious mind of men, which was more unified. Many Cåoists were fascinated with the idea of overcoming a linear and constricted relationship with time, and some Cåoist art and literature attempts to explore experience outside of time by considering lives and actions as summed totals made up in static pieces like a painting rather than a story, a fascination which was picked up by modern artists of all disciplines around the world through nonlinear narratives in literature and other explorations of the meaning of time. Most Cåoists considered the reversal of time impossible, and time to flow - like the Cåo - unidirectionally daratham. Mathematics Cåoism has a long tradition of debate over mathematical philosophy, the central question being whether the inherent nature of numbers are within the Ran or Nå. According to Issech, numbers were material constructions, and immateriality dealt only in the eternal and instantaneous, which, in the Nå, were equivalent. Some Cåoists have argued that finite numbers are of the Ran, and infinite and infinitesimal numbers are of the Nå (this is the origin of the Toranese world for calculus, Nåharja, or "mathematics of the Nå." However, many later Cåoist mathematicians have argued that only our physical manifestation of numbers are of the Ran, and that these ways of writing of numbers are not the essence of the number itself; therefore, the number itself is immaterial and inexpressible except through approximation, as evidenced by the impossibility of expressing the infinite nature of all real numbers exactly. Others make the distinction not between finite and infinite but between countably and uncountably infinite. Many believe that the principles of mathematics are a part of the Nå, and exist in a fundamental immaterial way. This has led many Cåoists to become fascinated with the possibility of expressing everything in the universe with the language of mathematics, even as many strict Cåoists argue that mathematics are a material construction that cannot explain anything in the Nå. Toranese mathematician Hasya Avtharpan argued that there was a fundamental link between the Cåo and the negative exponential function (e^-x), and that both Cåo and time could be expressed as functions of something called the fundamental basis (F); Cåo being e^-F and time being 1/F. An infinite fundamental basis corresponded to complete divergence of Ran and Nå, and a zero fundamental basis as complete convergence. Culture Education The concept of a proper Cåoist education is central to the religion, introducing students to the teachings of the great writers along with knowledge about culture and the world, with an emphasis on poetry and art. The Classical Cåoist curriculum, known as the Vid, was the cornerstone of the Toranese educational system for the majority of its empire. The Reformed Vid focuses more on culture and science than on strict teachings, but still spends significant time interpreting the Vadha. Today, the vid ''is taught at schools known as ''Vidrama, which are common not only in Toran but also around the world. Because the vid ''is no longer central to Toranese educational curricula (although they are influenced by much of less explicitly religious content of the ''vid), approximately 65% of Toranese primary and middle school students are enrolled in Vidrama, and another 40% of high school students. This number varies by region - in Khulambi it is over 90% of primary school students, while in Ptolomaise it is less than 40%. Many other countries have prominent Vidrama. 26% of Zenian primary school students are enrolled in vidrama (this is also a far higher percentage, nearly 90%, of Cåoists); 22% in Tara; 68% in Lemmenske; 4% in Sednyana; and 2% in Lasterus (this number may seem small, but it is half a million students). Cåoism and Science In the Early Modern world, Cåoism and the cultural traditions founded on Cåoism was often regarded as being irrational, illogical, emotion-based, and anathema to science. Toranese people were often portrayed as being "mystical," and it was common to speak of Southern civilization as more "spiritual" and anti-scientific, compared to a rationalist, logical Northern society. The development of modern physics and metaphyiscs, however - particularly regarding relativity, quantum physics, and the metaphyiscal theories that could serve to connect them into a broader framework - have largely served to validate Cåoist cosmology as a more accurate interpretation of the fundamental laws of the universe than Centrist or other traditionally Northern cosmologies. This has left Cåoism in a unique position among world religions in that many of its modern incarnations do not fundamentally contradict the teachings of science, and a fully Cåoist and fully scientific worldview are not mutually exclusive. That being said, science has not validated most of the teachings of Cåoism - there is certainly no empirical evidence for a Nå or a Cåo, although this is by definition because empirical evidence, by the teachings of Cåoism, is inherently of the Ran. The theory of general relativity does relate to the Cåoist theory of relative time, as does the current lack of consensus over the nature of consciousness (the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness") leave room for a Cåoist interpretation as consciousness being a phenomenon of the Nå that manifests itself in the physical world through patterns in the brain. Some argue, however, that this is because Modernist Cåoist has explicitly redefined itself time and time again in order to best match with known empirical observations. Around the World Sednyana Main Article: ''Astyi 5% of the population of the Sednyanese population, approximately six million people, identify as Cåoists, while another 8% (10 million) identify as Astyi, the neo-Incean religion that is often considered to be a sect of Reform Cåoism. Of those who identify as Cåoists, approximately 30% identify as Toranese, another 35% identify themselves as from another part of the world with a significant Cåoist population (particularly Zenia), and 35% are white or Incean. This stable non-immigrant Cåoist population in Sednyana dates back to the thirteenth century, although Cåoism and Astyi to this day retain the most adult converts of any religion in Sednyana; many Cåoists in Sednyana are culturally indistinguishable from Centrist or atheist Sednyanese except for their long family traditions of Cåoism and the fact that they send their children to ''Vidrama, where they learn Classical Toranese and read Cåoist scriptures and philosophical texts. Some will also decorate their homes with small nods to Toranese culture, but many Toranese references in Sednyanese Cåoism have been made Sednyanese. More than straight Cåoists, however, are Astyi, who are predominantly (~80%) Incean. Category:Religion Category:Toran